Tuesday, January 1, 2013

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) - Mini Review

Hello everyone! Sorry for not having written anything for so long! I'm currently on holiday and want to post reviews again because I haven't in so long, but don't really have the time to post full-length ones, so I'm going to do some mini reviews. If I like the way these go, I might start doing this kind of thing whenever I'm really busy so that I can still be releasing content.

I'll preface by acknowledging that I saw Spider-Man on a plane, and I won't deny that this has a big impact on how much I liked a film. I saw Iron Man for the first time on a plane and passionately disliked it, but upon two viewings with a normal TV, I found that I quite enjoy it. So, bear that in mind for the next few reviews.

I think we all know what this movie is about, but for anybody that might not, it details Peter Parker growing from being a friendless dorktrendy skater that gets bullied by everybody to a witty superhero with the powers of a spider. He also has the obligatory hottest-girl-in-school love interest and the villain whose relationship with every other character drops the six degrees of separation down to literally one. Is there a law against trying out new stories in Spider-Man films?

The main issue with this movie is how many completely ridiculous things happen all over the place. Throughout its two hour running time, we experience two internet-searching montages fit with an epic orchestral score, an ordinary teenager effortlessly infiltrate the world's biggest scientific organisation's most high-security sector, a lizardman recite poetry with his schizophrenic other-half, a lab coat stretchier than The Hulk's pants, grenades made out of random chemicals lying around in a high school science room, construction workers pull off a fete of organisational brilliance while somehow knowing exactly what Spider-Man's goal is as well as perfectly understanding the parameters of his powers, and a whole bunch of spoilery stuff that I promise is just as stupid.

On top of all that, it has the least attention-grabbing action scenes I've seen in a long, long time, the most derivative OST of any movie ever, the most messily-written motivational speeches of any superhero movie, a really B-grade opening, unbelievably cheesy Flashback scenes that use visual and audio techniques from the 70s, along with a shamefully appetising opening scene.

But alas, I have some positive remarks as well. The way Spider-Man moves is non-human, which I really appreciate, and he makes surprisingly creative use of his powers like building a spider web and then sitting in the middle of it and feeling the vibrations on it to locate The Lizard's lair (LIKE A REAL SPIDER!!!!!). I also appreciate that the spidey-sense is more of an instinctive feeling, rather than the "my spidey-sense is tingling" rubbish of the past.

All in all, The Amazing Spider-Man is just completely underwhelming. While it has its moments, you can count them on one hand, and that isn't really good enough when you need a ten metre-long scroll to list its faults. I must applaud it for trying out at least a few new things, but they almost all didn't work out and they only made it more apparent that everything else in the film was just the tired old cliches being recycled again.